A visit to Transgender (Khawaja Sara) Community – Part 2 – The Stories

This is the continuation from where I left last time, I actually hadn’t discussed anything about the visit on 6th May rather took an approach of highlighting the problems that they do face as a community in the society and how we are the actual perpetrators for making such circumstances for them. Today I am going to tell the brief accounts of the individuals I actually met at the rehabilitation programme and their stories.

Scene

Just to give an introduction to the scene that all of following took place in was a big hall with lots of chairs aligned towards the stage. We (My Students, Teachers and I) were sitting on the back as the Transgender (TG) people were entering a hall one by one after having their medical checkups and vaccinations. There was a lecture organised in the hall but it had quite a lot of time to start so till then the ones who were entering the hall were basically free to communicate with.

Alongside us were Sociology Students (almost 90% females) who were there for there research or thesis perhaps as they had these large number of questionnaires and we later found out that they were recording all of the conversations too. We were there without any paper of any sort and we even had left the Hygiene gift packs in the Admin department as they would be distributed to the TG people along with their monthly stipend of Rs.1150 on which they have to spend their whole month or at least are expected to.

Stories

I’ll try to go in sequence of how I met each of them and tell you about the insights of their lives.

1. Bobby

He was actually the first person I sat in front of. He was wearing a black t-shirt and had a bag, dressing a normal guy with jeans on and a college bag. I literally had an exchange of around 3 sentences with him including inquiring his name (Bobby), his whereabouts (Qasur) and employment (un-employed), reason being no one gives them a job. By this time a female student came to ask questions from Bobby for their research so she politely asked me to leave (lol) so I had to comply with that.

2. Ghulam

He was in men’s clothes as were most of the TG people there, his mouth didn’t open much while he talked and was speaking in a really low voice. Even when I asked him his name he said it so subtly that I had to ask again even though I was sitting quite close to him. He was also from Qasur but didn’t say much and we realised it soon that he didn’t have any interest in talking with us so we left him alone for good.

3. Munir

He basically gave us our first good talk and it was a really good experience. He was around the age of 50+, I assumed that because of his hair which had adopted a colour of golden white(ish) which normally get like that around that age. He had also come from Qasur in Bus which took a total of around Rs. 250 (leaving Rs. 900 for the month) for this whole trip. He gave us an idea about the problems that the TG people faced in our country including the wrong that his own family did to him notably his father.

His father used to beat him up when he was young and used to torture his knees which dried up the fluid inside of the kneecap which only results after a lot of intense inhumane beating (I imagine). He told us that it still hurts in the knees due to that beating that took place some 35 years ago or more I suppose.

He had gone to Karachi after being chased out of his home by his family and at the time of the marriage of his blood brother, he gave 10 Tolas of Gold (worth around Rs.500,000) to the newlywed bride and also a handsome amount to the couple as a gift but soon after his return he was asked to leave home because of the wrong influence he might have on the future children and other people.

He seemed active and healthy for which he was grateful to Allah, and also said something really painful which brought me to shed tears inside my heart, ‘It would be better if I would die‘, and it is obvious that he said it with a heavy heart. We immediately replied that no please don’t say that, it’s not good to be ungrateful to Allah to which he agreed but it was just sad. He didn’t talk much after this and soon had left to leave us, and started conversing with other of the TG people whom he knew.

Maybe there was nothing right in his life right now or ever in his entire life but the fact that he was still able to talk about his blessings, and was so grateful to Allah despite the tribulations and trials that he was facing in his difficult life.

There are more stories now which I think I will make another part for.

Anyway thanks for reading and I am sorry if I did make you sad but this is what the reality is of these people.

ps; I might have made some mistakes or errors while telling the story, mixed up some facts of them with others but they basically are of the TG people that we met there.

Happy Breathing!